Nowhere To Hide From Industrial Pollutants

Christine Hall

Back when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s we knew about pollution, we just didn’t yet understand how pervasive it was. In those days, it was thought that the only thing needed to escape the ravages of industrial pollution was to get out into the countryside, away from bad city air and water. Smog and polluted water were seen as urban problems that didn’t exist in the country. Soil pollution wasn’t even on the radar yet for most of us.

We now know that there is no place to go to get away from chemical pollutants. Even arctic ice thousands of miles away from any source of pollution is infused with man-made chemicals. There are new types of pollution, as well. Yesterday we published a link to a very scary video on biological pollutants, crops that have had their genetics artificially “enhanced” by companies like Monsanto, and that are now cross pollinating with non GMO crops, threatening to wipe out whole varieties of plants that have been on this planet for as long as their have been humans.

Today, we’re posting a video in which Ken Cook, president of Environmental Working Group, gives evidence that chemical pollutants are already in our bloodstreams before we’re born. Not only that, chemicals that are so dangerous that their use was banned over thirty years ago, like DDT and PCBs, are present in all of our children at the time of their birth.

Back in the 1960s, when the general population first started becoming aware of just how pervasive and dangerous industrial pollutants had become, most people probably figured that by the beginning of the 21st century we would be well on the way to dealing with this issue.

Now, over fifty years later and thirteen years into the new century, not only do we not have a handle on the problem, it’s getting worse. One has to wonder how this can happen, especially in places like the United States supposedly governed “for, by and of” the people, which means we’re the ones allowing this to happen. Are we insane? Or are we merely asleep at the wheel? If it’s the latter, will we wake up in time?

Christine Hall

Christine Hall began her journalism career in 1972 writing for the "underground" newspaper the Los Angeles Free Press. From 1988 until 2005 she covered politics for various newspapers in the Greensboro, North Carolina area.